It’s 3:oo pm on a Friday and you are thinking that it was a great week. You are finishing up to go home and you check your email one more time. You see one particular email with a subject line that screams frustration or problems. Your heart sinks. You know you shouldn’t open it until Monday, but you do. The email is filled with demands, frustrations, and for you to set up a meeting immediately. Now, all you can think about for that weekend, is the conversation and meeting that is looming. You lose sleep and you lose your weekend. That used to be me. And to be honest, I still have to fight my own mind when I receive emails or calls like this. It is hard! But I have learned from my mentors, that we need to have a system so that we always have a framework to follow so that the hard conversation goes as well as it can. We also need to have a whole lot of self talk to calm our mind and set boundaries for our own life. In all transparency, I have a system that is pretty awesome that I learned from my mentors, but I still deal with the waves of emotion that come when I receive these types of emails or calls. But that part is getting better too.
Listen…I am no expert when it comes to dealing with conflict. I used to dread it and think it was a reflection of things not going right. However, I have changed my lens on that now. This is because of the work I have done on my own inner story, the mentors i have learned from, and my own hard work and reflection that I am very proud of. I am a product of being influenced by the great mentors whom I walk alongside in my division and school as well as the mentors in the world wide web, Indigo, and the fantastic professional learning that my division sends me to. And I am grateful for it all….especially when it comes to dealing with hard conversations and conflict. Let’s be real, these conversations are inevitable and will happen. Once I got over my own story that if I am having a hard conversation or conflict that must mean I am failing as a leader, I realized that these were the conversations that made me better. They were there for a reason and usually it made a situation better rather than worse because of that hard conversation to find clarity.
People are always the problem, people are always the solution. Programs or the will to be right are never the solution. I know…that last one is hard…especially if you know you are right…People are complex and so we need these hard conversations to validate how they are feeling, listen to them, and develop a plan to move forward together. We all need difficult and radical candor because it unpacks and lightens the load or pressure eventually. The two things that need to happen when having conflict is that both parties care and try.
In this week’s post, I’m going to teach you some strategies that I have learned from mentors from my own school division as well as Todd Whitaker, whom I recently had the privilege of working with and learning from. I have implemented these strategies into my own hard conversations as well as taught teachers this during staff meetings or private conversations to coach them when communicating with parents. These strategies have provided clarity, a system, support, and success to defuse situations.
The system that I use and teach to the teachers, parents, students, or colleagues to navigate conflict was one I learned from my Superintendent. What was helpful about this was that it was how his senior leadership team dealt with conflict about the administrators in the division. That same system could also work with admin or teachers who also dealt with a complaint or concern. The system was heuristic response that always seemed to relieve the pressure and reveal a next step when it came to dealing with a complaint about a teacher or staff member. The system was:
- Listen, empathize, and ask probing questions – People need to feel heard and validated. Therefore the conversation should always start with the person who has the concern. Listening always makes things better. Ask questions to clarify and help them to reflect as well.
- Assume the staff member acted competently and with integrity – This one made me nod my head when I heard him speak of this. It was an ‘aha’ moment for me because it gave me a clear purpose and pathway to my exact role in this conversation. My job was to get teachers out of trouble and so I needed to find that language to assume they did their best and not to escalate the concern. I always knew this, but hearing it this way gave me more clarity on how I would enter conversations with the concerned person as well as how I would communicate my role in the conversation to teachers after the conversation when sharing the concern with them.
- Share concern verbatim with staff member – Ensure that you start with telling the teacher that you are relaying the conversation and concern word for word to the teacher to help them understand the view point of the parent as well as that your role in the conversation was to get them out of trouble and to help to find a next step. They need to know the truth of the words spoken so they can unpack a plan and understand how the other party felt.
- Ask teachers to contact parent to resolve…give pointers when necessary. It is imperative that the administrator is not the only one trying to fix the problem. The teacher needs to be a part of it, take responsibility for their role, validate their own feelings, and work with the parent to resolve the issue. Phone calls are always better then emails so I always make sure they call after we have had our conversation to clarify next steps. As the administrator, I also call to close the loop.
This next strategy I teach within our staff meetings is to help teachers (and myself) navigate issues that might come up. This strategy works when dealing with frustrated parents, students, or even if you are a parent and dealing with a teenager who has a messy room. And yes…I am speaking from a lot of experience with teens and messy rooms….But seriously, this analogy works! Even with teenagers…
I learned this system from Todd Whitaker who is an author and a principal. He first says that you need to teach your teachers that we don’t yell, we don’t argue, and we don’t use sarcasm. The purpose of any conflict is to find solutions, not excuses and that it will take some massive effort. Every day we have to sort out who is on the side of the kids. Our goal is to make sure the issue or ‘bad behavior’ doesn’t happen again. A hard conversation is not to seek revenge, be right, or fight for what you believe. Next, I always teach the teachers to always treat parent or student concerns as big concerns. I am very adamant on always calling the parent before the kid gets to them so that they hear the story from the adult first.
Next, Todd Whitaker spoke of three modes to approach a difficult conversation that I always teach teachers in November. Why November and not the beginning of the year? Well…because November is when the honeymoon phase is over and we all know behaviors start to escalate more in that month, so they need it the most at this time of year. The three emotional modes that we often approach a conflict are:
- Child Mode – This is the ego state in which individuals behave, feel and think similarly to how they did as a child. For example, a person who receives a poor evaluation at work may respond by looking at the floor, or crying, or getting angry. The Child is the expression of feelings, thoughts and emotions that are being replayed from childhood. When we talk in Child mode we behave more emotionally than we do at other times, which could be sad, angry, despairing, fearful,defensive, depressed. We may use the body language of a child, such as squirming, giggling, whining, shrugging, teasing. There are many phrases that point to the Child being present, the person tends to use simple language such as “I want”, “I need”, “I don’t care”, “don’t know”.
- Parent Mode – This mode can escalate someone. This is kind of a bossy mode. You tell the child or the parent what the other party did wrong almost like you are tattling on them and trying to get the child in trouble. This can escalate a parent if you are approaching in a condescending or defensive way. This mode can also escalate a child if you are reprimanding them and constantly barking at them. They tend to tune you out or act out even more. The Parent ego state is comprised of the behaviours, thoughts and feelings copied from our parents, or other parental figures. Our Parent mode is made up of hidden and overt messages such as ‘you / I should’, ‘under no circumstances’, ‘always’ and ‘never forget’, ‘don’t lie, cheat, steal’. It has a control factor to it that never goes well.
- Business Mode – This mode approaches the conversation with a belief that you are not solving problems, you are changing behaviors. If one person is in business mode, you will never argue. This mode approaches conflict with kindness, politeness, and respect. The business mode uses the first system I taught you where you listen, validate and ask probing questions. Next, you come up with three ways to take action. Implement the actions and then follow up. Business mode will always be the best mode when you are parenting as well. I used to immediately switch into parent mode when I asked my child to clean their room. This instantly made her mad or moody and escalated her behavior and mine. Now, I try as best as I can to approach my request in business mode. “I have noticed that your room is getting a little messy and there are dishes left up here. You don’t want bugs in your room looking for food do you? My fear is also that you might have a friend over and they might see your messy room and not want to hang out there or it smells bad. Do you mind cleaning it up a little?” This always works better….although she could always do a better job of cleaning!
So there you have it! A system to teach teachers with dealing with difficult behaviors in children, communicating with parents, or having hard conversations with colleagues. It is also a system for administrators to implement when dealing with parents, kids, colleagues or teachers. This system should always be about changing behaviors and less about being right or trying to solve the problem right there. Problem solving takes time and will not be solved if the behavior doesn’t change by both parties involved. This is hard but necessary work that will always be tricky.
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Whitaker, T. (2011). What great principals do differently (2nd ed.). Eye On Education.
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